AI Overdrive (or underdrive)

In the last week or so -- since I read this piece by some founder/VC guy I had never heard of but which has apparently generated a lot of buzz -- my mind has kicked into overdrive on AI. The guy makes a good case. But still I haven't carved out the time to follow his prescriptions -- and only partially because my calendar has been full-ish. Some thoughts

• If we use AI to solve all of our problems will we become less able to formulate them and prioritize amongst them?
• Will AI -- and the people who drive innovation in and through it -- ever be the right people to lead society, set direction and allocate funds towards the effecting of public goods? I listened to a discussion between Dwarkesh Patel and Dario Amodei of Anthropic in the car going to and from Charlotte for a conference -- and I do need to read some of Amodei's writings (starting here) -- but I do feel like the breathless size of the amounts of money bandied about and the freneticism of the arms race around AI supremacy just feels all too distracting.

Mostly I sense that when I am not consuming content about AI, whether presented in written or oral form, I quickly come back to a feeling that it is simply unable to touch the fundamental problems of human existence. I'd much rather be out amongst people and interacting with them. People are my people.

But yes, if I can dive into the time-saving potential of the AI-enabled toolkit emerging around my professional domain, it should in principle create more time to be amongst people. Though now that I say all of this I have to recognize that people are my people only a certain portion of the week. Unlike true extroverts, I can't be amongst them 24/7 or I get exhausted. So to some extent words are my people as much as people are.